When employees at Minneapolis-based e-commerce services firm
Imaginet
want to unwind, they have a little fun. Sometimes the staff takes
in a minor-league baseball game or a picnic. Other times, they get
together for bowling or wine tasting. They even had a
Survivor-esque staff contest once. The goal of all this,
says president and CEO Scott Litman, 34, is to take a breather.
"It's nice after a long week to get together to
relax," he says. "Sometimes it's a wrap-up to the
week. Other times, we're just catching our breath because
we'll be working over the weekend."

In our low-unemployment, 24/7 economy, employers like Imaginet
try to do everything they can to make work fun. These days,
companies are promoting their workplace cultures as much as their
products. Entrepreneurs hope that offering opportunities for fun,
whether picnics, barbecues or watergun fights, will ease their
recruiting and retention challenges.

But while employers strive to show their fun sides, surveys show
employees are putting more value on their personal time. A May 2000
Radcliffe Public Policy Center and Fleet Financial Group survey of
1,008 workers revealed two-thirds were not satisfied with their
work/family balance. When asked to rank job factors ranging from
personal time to salary and job prestige, having a schedule that
allowed for personal time was No. 1 on the list. (Last on the list?
Having a high-prestige job.) In today's crazy, dotcom-fueled
economy, personal time is as powerful as a paycheck. "We found
people were making family time a priority," says Shannon
Quinn, a member of the study's research team at the Radcliffe
Public Policy Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "They were
willing to trade money for personal time."

Happy Hour?

The Radcliffe study also revealed another trend: Personal time
is becoming more important to younger workers, particularly
workaholic Gen Xers heading into their 30s and starting families.
Lifestyle changes are suddenly creating the need for more personal
space away from the job. "Once only concerned with salary, Gen
Xers are now looking for time. They're starting to negotiate
time for salary, and it's turning employers on their
ears," says Cam Marston, co-founder of Marston
Communications, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based consulting
firm that follows Gen X trends.

Mark Oldman, 32, co-founder of New York City-based career Web
site Vault.com, says companies are hiring "Julie McCoy cruise
director types," whose job it is to come up with fun ideas.
All employees need to do is show up. "Companies are trying to
engineer conviviality," he says. "On the good side, it
can increase the quality of life in the workplace. On the other, it
can come off as forced, contrived, even counterproductive in some
cases." Can employers take fun too far?

Catherine, a Gen X employee who asked that her last name be
withheld, has experienced this trend toward fun in Silicon Valley
dotcom culture-from beer blasts and dance parties to ice
skating. Although events usually aren't mandatory, she says,
managers have pressured her to show up. Sometimes the fun lasts
late into the evening. Is it frustrating? "Definitely. You
have to weigh which ones will be career-limiting if you don't
attend and which are better to skip out on," she says.
"Trying to juggle all this can be very stressful."

Always worried about productivity, some employers are finding
roundabout ways to schedule in some fun. Catherine tells the story
of a friend who works for a small Silicon Valley dotcom. The CEO
decided employees were too stressed and hired a masseuse to come to
the office, but with one hitch: The masseuse was scheduled to come
in every other Saturday, and the employees had to come to work to
get their massages. "Each person in the company had to
participate in this mandatory 'stress reduction.'
Gak!" Catherine says.

Workplace fun defeats the purpose when it happens too often or
edges into personal time, says Kevin Cashman, founder and CEO of
LeaderSource
Inc., an executive coaching firm in Minneapolis. He sees taking
fun too far as one of the pitfalls of leadership. If fun is forced,
he says, then it's serving the organization and not the
individual. Leaders are imposing what they see as enjoyable
activities on employees who don't have the courage to express
their disinterest. "If employees are thinking it's a drag,
then it becomes a leadership issue," Cashman says.

While employees at Vault participate in what Oldman calls
"organized socializing," which includes happy hours,
Friday night barbecues and bowling, he says it's not mandatory
to do so. Still, he realizes employees might feel obligated to put
in "face time," thinking not showing up could make them
look anti-social. "I'm sure employees feel the pressure.
It's wired in from sixth grade, when your friend asks if
you're going to Mary's birthday party," he says,
adding that having too many events can hurt employee morale.

But having fun can become a control issue for management, and it
can fall into a boring pattern as a result. Marston tells the story
of his job at a Washington, DC, firm where he asked the firm's
leader whether the employees could plan something instead of the
traditional party at the leader's house. The leader finally
relented, and the employees planned a scavenger hunt around the
city, complete with limos donated by a vendor. "It was crazy,
fun and cheap. It was also an idea the employer would have never
thought of," he says. What it comes down to is, what
management sees as fun, employees may not.

Workers can also end up struggling to balance the company's
fun culture with its workload. When a mandatory companywide
riverboat trip was looming for Imaginet's staff, the employees
in one department were suddenly stressed about meeting a crucial
project deadline. "I told them, 'If this trip means
gritting your teeth the whole time, it's elective. Besides, the
most important thing around here is the work itself.' With
their workload, they weren't going to enjoy it anyway,"
Litman says. It seems to be working. Imaginet, with annual sales of
about $14 million, was selected last year as a "Great Place to
Work" by the Twin Cities' CityBusiness
magazine.

Make Someone Happy

Fun definitely has its place, but it takes communication and
finding a balance that works for everyone. Here are some tips for
having fun that won't leave employees frustrated:

Have a point. Make sure events have specific purposes
and are kept brief. "They have to have a specific purpose
other than to kill a keg," Oldman says. Give employees time to
plan ahead. At least one month's notice is best, particularly
for employees with kids.

Keep events limited to work hours. Does that event
really need to be held on a Saturday afternoon? Employees see fun
during the work-day as more of a perk than events that happen after
hours. They view your willingness to have fun "on the
clock" as respect for their personal time, something that can
build loyalty, not to mention better-rested employees. A daytime
baseball game on a workday, for example, feels like a treat to
employees.

Get input from all employees. "If you've got a
bunch of folks whose idea of a good time is a good, hard session of
video gaming, don't make them go on a windsurfing trip,"
Catherine says.

John O'Malley, president of Birmingham, Alabama-based
consulting firm Strategic Visions Inc., suggests using a blind
survey to learn the events workers enjoy and when they want to do
them.

Don't force it. Don't make partici-pation
mandatory or pressure employees to attend. If employees aren't
sticking around for fun, chances are there's something about
the event or the time it's scheduled that's turning them
off. O'Malley says giving employees individual "surprise
days" every so often can't hurt. "After a huge push,
tell an employee that he or she doesn't have to come to work
tomorrow, or offer a weekend extension," he says.

Finally, make sure applicants understand your company's fun
side. It'll help them decide whether your company is right for
them and keep you from hiring someone who doesn't see the fun
in what you're trying to do.